The BlackBerry third party app market is a curiosity in that there are not too many apps available, but the good side is that there are some gems which sparkle in a world dominated by themes and gimmicky apps which serve little purpose. Here is a list of what I consider to be those gems, and these are ones which I have used and tested thoroughly. If you feel that I have missed some which deserve to be in the top 10 feel free to add your comments and let us all know what is out there.
1/ QuickLaunch ($4.99)
Navigating around the BlackBerry OS is, in my opinion, pretty swift once you are used to the way it works. However, it can get tiresome when you install lots of apps and require access to more apps than can fit on your first screen.
QuickLaunch provides a handy menu list on the front screen which is activated by a side key and you can add whatever you like to the list. It does not just provide shortcuts for apps, but can handle URLs, SMS, PIN messaging and even single files, videos and photos etc. You can customise the look (font sizes, separators etc.) and also tweak the shortcut activation and many other aspects of the software. In short it is a huge help when navigating a busy BlackBerry and with a low memory requirement and a good price, it is close to perfect. Rating: 9/10.
2/ FileScout (free)
Like many mobile operating systems there is no file manager in the BlackBerry OS. FileScout offers a basic file management system which provides details of all files in main memory and on an expansion card in a list which looks s though it was built in to the system.
You can open ZIP files and also view many file types directly from within the app itself, and there are many other file management features included as well; renaming, sending, deleting and searching are all included for good measure. You may not use it every day, but it is well worth having onboard. Rating 8/10.
3/ Xenozu (free)
One drawback of the BlackBerry OS is the inability to view YouTube videos. Skyfire may well bring a proper solution in time, but until then Xenozu offers an alternative which works pretty well under Wi-Fi. The menu system is a little quirky, but is quick and you will soon find yourself at home navigating the system.
There is a drawback and sadly it is one that cannot be helped at this time- the video quality is not great and is particular noticeable on lower quality videos. The mobile YouTube site can also be accessed by most new BlackBerry’s, but this is a good interim option until something better comes along. It has made my top 10 purely for effort alone. Rating 6/10.
4/ Viigo (free)
RSS is a grey area in the BlackBerry world, but there are some decent options available. Viigo is probably the most well known and covers a huge range of delivery media such as simple RSS feeds and even podcasts.
I have been using it for a couple of weeks and it really is a great tool for bringing a myriad of interesting information to your device. The podcast facility works extremely well and the more I use this app, the better it seems to get. Rating: 8/10.
5/ UberTwitter (free with adverts)
Twitter is now available on every mobile platform and starting to rival Facebook in terms of popularity in the mobile world. UberTwitter is by far the best BlackBerry Twitter client I have seen to date and is clean and easy to read even on small screened BlackBerry’s. There are adverts in the free version, but they are not too intrusive and I personally can live with them quite easily.
All a Twitter client really needs is to display the tweets in a clear fashion and to try to infiltrate as many potential Twitter features to a mobile device as possible. This one is close to doing all of that already and is still heavily in development. Rating: 8/10.
6/ Bloomberg Mobile (free)
This is a fairly specialised app, but is an example of what can be done on the BlackBerry platform. It is as fully featured as the iPhone version and looks splendid in all of its views.
Digging deep brings up varied features which go deeper than just offering an overview of the current world markets, and there is potential here to manage your own stocks if you need to. It looks great, works great and is hard to fault in any area. Rating: 9/10.
7/ REXconnect ($14.95)
Since the days when Psion PDAs could swap information between internal applications easily, we have not seen a mobile operating system since which has managed to achieve this ‘highly useful’ trick. Sony tried it with the Clie TH55 and succeeded, but the device itself did not sell in big numbers and thus the idea did not fulfil its potential.
REXconnect brings together a number of BlackBerry apps and enables you to swap information between these apps with the touch of a menu item. For example you can be viewing an email and then add it to your calendar by tapping ‘REXconnect’ in the menu. There is a caveat at the moment in that you may have to choose ‘get plain text’ in the Messaging app to export an email on new devices. You can do the same with the memopad, tasks and all sorts of other apps. It may seem expensive at nearly $15, but the efficiency improvements are immense. Rating: 8/10.
8/ TetherBerry ($49.99)
$50 for an app?!? It seems a lot, but this is an incredibly useful app for delivering mobile internet to a laptop via a connected BlackBerry. Arguably more useful on the Bold due to its 3G connection, but it still has a place on almost every BlackBerry device.
It can mask the way it works to save your network provider jumping on you with huge charges and is the epitome of efficiency in a world where this kind of app can often be complicated to set up. It has sold in huge numbers despite the price and it deserves all of the success it has had to date. Rating: 9/10.
9/ BerryWeather ($9.95)
There are a few weather apps dotted around for BlackBerry, but none come close to the look and feel of BerryWeather. With forecasting, radar maps and even GPS integration it is hard to see what is missing with this app.
It does not look like most other BlackBerry apps and has a feel that other developers should aim for in my opinion. There is no other weather app that comes close to this one currently and it is suitable for the obsessive weather tracker or if you just need to know what to wear tomorrow. Superb! Rating: 9/10.
10/ SlickTasks ($4.95)
Task management is all about offering a visual representation of what you need to get done and SlickTasks manages this aspect very well indeed. With nested folders, complete customisation and many other features it is hard to beat.
The standard BlackBerry tasks app is too simple for some. Some of the other task offerings are far too complex for others. SlickTasks gets the balance right and will work for a greater slice of users than most of the competition. Rating: 9/10.
I will be writing similar articles for all of the other mobile platforms over the next few weeks, so if you want to recommend an app for your platform drop me a line at shaun (at) mailstm.co.uk.
If you are tempted by any of the paid for apps above please use discount code ‘top10′ to take 20% off the price of each one.
